


wind across the desert

by skatzaa



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 06:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15407376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatzaa/pseuds/skatzaa
Summary: George Holly is not a young man.





	wind across the desert

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I'm so enamored with the concept of Holly as a cowboy working in the southwest, and yet here we are. Mostly, this started as a way to look at outsiders' reactions to the _capaill_ and then Mr. Holly found his own voice, lol.

 

George Holly is not a young man.

He is not old, by any means, but that doesn’t make him young. He built one of the most successful breeding yards in America from the ground up with nothing but his bare hands and his sister’s financial guidance. Before that he worked the cattle ranches of the southwest, where he learned to live life on the back of a horse and how to speak Spanish like the Mexican men and the best way to gut a predator—man or animal—that was after his herd.

George takes great pleasure in wearing ridiculous hats and charming buyers into cooperating with him because they think he’s simple and underestimate him, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the people and places that made him who he is today.

Thisby, for all that it’s cold and wet and utterly unlike the Sonoran, is dearly familiar to him from the moment he lets his too-white shoes sink into its mud. It feels like arriving at home and starting an adventure all at once, and for all that he doesn’t know Thisby, he recognizes his desert in the island all the same.

And if Thisby is his desert in all the ways that matter, Sean Kendrick is the George Holly of twenty years ago—a young man as prickly as the saguaro who has sunk his heart into the land around him, who wants nothing more than to protect that which he holds dear. It’s jarring, almost, to see himself reflected back at him from a face that could cut through barbed wire.

George has heard the stories about the  _capaill_ , of course—it’s most of the reason why he’s here, instead of spending mild California winter days coddling his nieces and nephews, to his sister’s amusement—but nothing he’s been told could have prepared him for the reality of Corr.

Sean leads the horse out of its stall and George only barely resists the urge to press himself against the stall door at his back. If Corr is a horse, it is only by technicality: he is a monster. Twenty hands at the withers if an inch and there’s something.... incredibly  _unnatural_  about him. It’s the forward facing eyes, maybe—more reminiscent of a coyote than any herd animal—or the way his skin stretches tightly across ribs and muscles, with none of the soft, roundness of Holly’s own horses.Not to mention the teeth. Or perhaps it’s the way Corr’s mouth extends far beyond the place where a horse’s stops, or maybe—

It’s not any one thing, but George stands back and lets Sean go ahead with his mount, watches the way Sean Kendrick—a slip of a man, really, as wiry and thin as his  _capall_ —holds a monster with nothing but a leather halter and an old lead rope, frayed in spots from years of use. 

George Holly has looked monsters in the eye before and come out much worse for wear, all things considered. Corr is not like the horses he is used to, that is certain, but George still feels a prickle of anticipation race up the lengths of his arms. 

Sean Kendrick looks back over his shoulder and says, in a voice like the Hassayampa where it bubbles up from the ground, “Are you coming, Mr. Holly?”

George reaches up and adjusts his hat. When he is satisfied, he nods to Sean and steps out into the aisle proper, hands tucked into his pockets. He is beginning to get the sense that there is much more to Thisby than meets the eye, more even than what his agents have told him over the years. But George Holly is well-acquainted with mysteries, and he’s never been one to back down from a challenge.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated.
> 
> Read on,  
> Skats


End file.
